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The Social in Private Property: Lessons from Eminent Domain (and Oil)

Friday, October 28, 2016 at 1:30pm to 3:00pm

Warren Hall, B73 (Polson Seminar room) 137 Reservoir Drive, Ithaca, NY 14853

Debbie Becher, Barnard College.

News media and sociologists reports mostly public outrage and heated protest in response to eminent domain for economic development. Becher will show how this obscures a much more complex American experience. Becher will present findings from the first comprehensive study of a city's acquisitions: of the city of Philadelphia between 1992 and 2007. Becher argues that when evaluating the policy, citizens and officials alike appealed to a shared notion of investment. Becher will discuss how it is this social conception of property as an investment of value, committed over time, that government seems responsible for protecting. Becher's findings stand in stark contrast to the views of libertarian and left-leaning activists and academics, but recognizing property as investment, she argues, may offer a solid foundation for more progressive urban policies. She will connect this interpretation of government action in the urban Northeastern US to more recent research on private negotiations for oil in the rural Interior West. 

The discussion of eminent domain draws from Becher's book, Private Property and Public Power: Eminent Domain in Philadelphia (Oxford University Press, 2014), 2016 co-winner of the Zelizer Book Award from the Economic Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association, and the 2015 Hart Book Prize from the Socio-Legal Studies Association.

 

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Event Type

Seminar

Departments

Development Sociology

Tags

dsoc, news, devsoc

Website

http://devsoc.cals.cornell.edu

Contact E-Mail

st237@cornell.edu

Contact Name

Susan Barry

Contact Phone

607-255-9510

Speaker

Debbie Becker

Speaker Affiliation

Barnard College

Open To

public

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